Our first flower of 2010

Brought to my attention by my son, Kellen, today we gazed upon the first flower in our yard this year. A stray crocus, sprouting up through the grass. What a joy!

For a desert-born girl like me, there are untold swells and stirrings of hope and longing for warm summer days about this time of year. Seeing this first flower confidently shoot up to greet the crisp air and morning sun the day after our northwest clouds released a continuous rain fills me with joy.

Ah, the promise of a blossoming spring. It’s a fabulous thing.

I am so inspired by my 5-year-old daughter.  Her ability to find joy in common moments is just about unparalleled in my view.  Last night, after her bath, she went out in the backyard to find the sprinkler going.  Like many children, she doesn’t wait for an invitation to run through spraying water.  I was just about to holler at her for running in wet grass right after she had gotten so clean — yes, I know this doesn’t make any sense; but at the end of a long work day I am sometimes not at my best…  Fortunately, I paused long enough to see how much joy she found in this simple activity.  She squealed and giggled and ran and yelled and giggled some more.  For a good 15 minutes she was living so much in the moment, so pleased with a life where there is grass and water and one can be naked experiencing them both.

As Brian (my husband, her father) and I watched her, we were completely enchanted and couldn’t help but giggle ourselves.  I spied joy not once, but three times; and it made even the longest of days dissolve like sugar in water into a sweet and clear moment.